Tour de France tournament analysis

Author

Kacper Gałan

Published

March 8, 2024

Analysis of Tour de France results from years 1952-2016

Intoduction

Table 1: The first six observations of the collected data
Year Average pace(km/h) of winner Total distance(km) Number of stages Finished the race Number of entries Nationality of winner Team of winner Initial city Initial country
1952 32.23 4898 23 78 122  Italy Italy Brest France
1953 34.59 4476 22 76 119  France France Strasbourg France
1954 33.23 4656 23 69 110  France France Amsterdam Netherlands
1955 34.45 4495 22 69 130  France France Le Havre France
1956 36.27 4498 22 88 120  France Nord-Est-Centre Reims France
1957 34.52 4665 22 56 120  France France Nantes France

The presented dataset (Table 1) contains information about the Tour de France cycling event, held between 1952 and 2016. The Tour de France is a multi-stage cycling race usually held in July across France and neighbouring countries. It is part of the World Tour series.

The prestige of this race is linked to its long history (it is now the oldest cycling race), its great tradition and, above all, the scale of its difficulty. A particularly famous moment is the ascent of the L’Alpe d’Huez pass (see Figure 1): length of ascent - 13.8 km; average slope 7.9% (maximum 12%), elevation - 1126 metres.

Figure 1: L’Alpe d’Huez Valley

Analysis of gathered data

Basic descriptive statistics

Table 2: Basic statistical functions for a given set
Variable min max median mean
Average pace(km/h) of winner 32.23 41.65 37.32 37.50
Total distance(km) 3282.00 4898.00 3946.00 3,928.07
Finished the race 53.00 174.00 117.00 114.81
Number of entries 100.00 210.00 170.00 160.94

The analysis of a given topic should start with basic information about this set, which already allows us to notice the first correlations or observations (see Table 2). For example, in the columns for median and mean, we can see how small the deviations are between the two measures.

Starting towns of the Tour de France

Table 3: Countries where Tour de France started

Initial country

Sum

France

47

Netherlands

6

Belgium

3

Germany

3

Switzerland

1

Luxembourg

1

Spain

1

Ireland

1

United Kingdom

2

As you can see from the chart (see Table 3), it cannot be assumed that the race always starts in France. This can be seen even better in the map below (see Figure 2). It shows how geographically diversed the tournament is.

Figure 2: Initial cities on the map of Europe

Who rode best?

The table below (see Table 4) helps to answer the above question. It allows us to see that it was the Irish (!) who drove the most on average, while the highest speeds were achieved by the British.

Table 4: Results of the winning nations

Results

Nationality of winner

Average distance

Average pace

 Italy

37.20

4,156.40

 France

35.94

4,214.30

 Luxembourg

38.26

3,980.45

 Spain

38.57

3,769.34

 Netherlands

34.35

4,219.00

 Belgium

35.73

3,989.83

 USA

37.59

3,624.00

 Ireland Irish

36.65

4,231.00

 Denmark

39.23

3,907.00

 Germany

39.23

3,950.00

Australia

39.79

3,430.00

 United Kingdom

39.92

3,448.68

Osiągi zwycięskich narodowości

The distribution of average distance to average speed is visualised in the plot below (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Visualisation of the performance of the individual winning nations

However, several observations were omitted from the above analysis. These are the rows containing NA (unspecified) values found, for example, in the Narodowość zwycięzcy column.

Year Average pace(km/h) of winner Total distance(km) Number of stages Finished the race Number of entries Nationality of winner Team of winner Initial city Initial country
1999 40.27 3686.0 20 141 180 NA NA Le Puy de Fou France
2000 39.56 3662.0 21 128 180 NA NA Futuroscope France
2001 40.02 3446.0 20 144 189 NA NA Dunkirk France
2002 39.93 3282.0 20 153 189 NA NA Luxembourg France
2003 40.94 3427.0 20 147 189 NA NA Paris France
2004 40.55 3391.1 20 147 188 NA NA Liege Belgium
2005 41.65 3608.0 21 155 189 NA NA Fromentine France

We are referring to the historic events of the Tour de France between 1999 and 2005, when Lance Armstrong, American road cyclist, Olympian and ‘author’ of one of the biggest doping scandals in sports history, triumphed on the podium seven times. On 24 August 2012, he was retrospectively banned from competition from 1 August 1998 and disqualified from professional cycling for life for using prohibited boosters.

Team of winner

Nationality of winner

Average distance

Average pace

Lance Armstrong

3,500.3

40.42

The table above shows Armstrong’s average performance. It is worth comparing his average speed with the fastest nation at the tournament - the British. The difference is (km/h):

[1] NaN

The American, thanks to doping , he rode on average the fastest in the entire tournament in the years under discussion.

Ratio of those enrolled to those who completed the competition

The Percent column in the graph below expresses the percentage ratio of the variable Number of entries to Finished the race in the years in question. From the table below we do not notice any particular correlation between the years and the relationship in question.

Year

Percentage

(2010,2016]

84

(2003,2010]

80

(1984,1990]

72

(1997,2003]

72

(1965,1971]

70

(1978,1984]

70

(1990,1997]

69

(1971,1978]

66

(1952,1958]

61

(1958,1965]

59

Number of stages vs. total distance

The graphic below shows the ratio of the variable Number of stages to the variable Total distance(km) by country where the race has started at least twice. From the graph we can read the obvious relationship - the more stages, the longer the race.

Figure 4: Number of stages vs. Total distance